


The Sundry Sins of John Winchester

by Winnie_Chester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Sam Winchester, Angst, Hurt Dean Winchester, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Sam Winchester, Pre-Stanford, Teen Angst, Unrequited Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 20:33:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14363103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winnie_Chester/pseuds/Winnie_Chester
Summary: Just a quick little pre-Stanford, angry, lovesick, teenage Sam Winchester.





	The Sundry Sins of John Winchester

Dad and Dean still weren’t back when Sam got home from school.

They had gone hunting the evening before and Sam had felt more than a twinge of worry when he’d woken up and seen his brother's bed still unslept in, but it wasn’t that unusual. It was only 6am and sometimes hunts took all night, sometimes there were graves to dig up or bodies to burn and so it wasn’t often Dean wasn’t back by breakfast but it wasn’t completely unheard of.  And Sam was fifteen, almost sixteen. He could take care of himself.

Dean hadn’t told him what exactly they were hunting. He’d been almost finished packing up his gear, all bright-eyed and buzzing with anticipation when Sam got home yesterday and was out the door before Sam had even finished making himself a couple of pre-dinner peanut butter sandwiches. Dean had mused Sam’s hair, filched a sandwich, and tossed Sam a crumpled twenty for pizza later, telling him to sit tight. And then Dad was knocking on the motel room door and ordering Dean to hurry up and they were both gone before Sam could say _be careful_ and he was left alone with a plate of sandwiches and a pile of chemistry homework due in a class he probably wouldn't even be in next month, vaguely unsettled and raw.

Sam was always vaguely unsettled and raw these days.  

But it was mostly manageable. Sam had gotten very use to being left alone in motel rooms to do homework while the entirety of his remaining family put themselves in mortal peril. He didn’t like to be ditched, but he’d become accustom to ignoring the low-grade anxiety, the pit in his stomach that wouldn’t abate until Dean came back through the door. 

But that was yesterday. By now his low-grade anxiety had been given plenty of time to fester into a more intense, chest-tightening fear. _They should have been back by now._  Sam picks up the ugly avocado green motel phone and dials Dean’s phone number from memory, then Dad's. Both go directly to voicemail _because of course they fucking did_.

It was never that easy in his family.

The car wasn't out front but Sam goes to check Dad’s room anyway. Maybe they were both in there, maybe one of them was hurt, maybe the car had been left behind—but no, Sam can see through the gap in the blinds that Dad’s room is just as empty as his own.

He picks the lock anyway. Maybe Dad had left something out that would give Sam a clue about where they had gone. Not that his father was ever that careless with his work. John was careless with plenty of other things, his sons included, but never with the family secret. 

John’s room was dark and cave-like, bed made with military precision amid a chaos of takeout containers and empty bottles.  Sam feels fury run through his veins.  _Fuck you too, Dad._   If he’d been drinking before he took Dean out, Sam would never forgive him.

 Sometimes—a lot of the time lately-- Sam hated his father. 

Sam pokes through the dresser drawers but doesn’t find anything but arguably clean shirts and an opened bottle of Jim Beam, which he nicks in spite. He leaves, slamming the motel room door so hard he hears a beer bottle on the radiator fall over and break against the thin industrial carpet. _Good_. He hopes his father steps on it.

Still no Impala glinting in the lot.

Sam returns to his room and tosses the fifth of whiskey into his backpack, where his father would never find it.  Maybe he could sell it to someone at school and add a bit to the escape fund he’d been secretly building for the last couple of years. $738. 

Well, $758 once he’d added Dean’s pizza money from last night—he’d had a couple of packages of ramen for dinner instead.  $758 was plenty to run away on—plenty for a bus ticket and a motel anywhere—but when Sam left he intended to stay gone. He _needed_ to stay gone.  He didn't want to spend the rest of his life sleeping in musty motel rooms, a gun lumpy under the thin pillow, fighting with his father, and worrying about his brother.

Not that there was much he could do on the last count, but a little distance might mute it a bit. It would at least spare him this, the sinking feeling in his stomach, the ice in his veins knowing Dean hadn’t come home last night.

 There are other reasons he needs to run, too.

Dean loves this life, or at least he put on a show for Dad and Sam that suggested he did. He’d be buoyant at the start, cleaning his gun and humming, throwing himself into tracking the monster. Dean liked playing hero, liked showing off for his Dad and little brother. There was a lightness to Dean when he was hunting that Sam didn’t understand at all, had never felt himself. 

The message light on the motel phone isn't blinking but almost nothing works right in this shitty place anyway, so Sam crosses the parking lot and asks the middle-age man working the desk if there had been any calls for him. There hadn’t— _of course_ —so Sam borrows a phonebook because Sam can't just do _nothing_ and goes back to the room to begin calling hospitals, holding his breath each time he is put on hold so they could check. He’d finished with hospitals and was on to police stations when he feels, more than hears, the Impala pull in. Sam has always had a sixth sense for Dean.

He hangs up on the police receptionist he’d been speaking with and runs out the door, terror giving way to relief and low-rent anger. _Why the fuck hadn’t they called?_

Dad had been driving, per usual, but Dean is hunched against the passenger window and even separated by glass and metal and parking lot, Sam’s blood goes cold. Sam runs outside, wrenching open the door, catching Dean as he begins to slump. The air in the car is tinged with the scent of metal and both his father and Dean have bruises purpling on their faces.  But Dean’s lip is busted and his hair is matted with blood.

“Where the hell were you?” Sam hisses at his father. 

Dean opens his eyes and smiles at Sam, slightly unfocused. There is blood on his teeth.

His father shoots Sam a look, but doesn’t reprimand him for the tone. “Hunting.”

John get out of the car and he doesn’t seem to be bleeding much and is certainly in significantly better condition than Dean, which also infuriates Sam, white hot down his spine.

“Help me with your brother,” John orders, as if Sam wasn’t already pulling Dean out of car, arm around his waist. As if Sam has to be _told_.

Dean lists, his weight heavy against Sam and John comes around and throws Dean’s other arm around his shoulders and together they haul Dean through the motel door that Sam had left open. 

Sam maneuvers Dean into a chair, unbuttoning Dean’s shirt so he can run his hands over him and check for injuries, growing steadily more angry.

In any other situation, Sam would have been very glad to have his hands on his brother. 

John goes to the bathroom and turns on the faucet.

“What the fuck happened, Dad?” Sam can’t control the anger in his voice, not while looking at his brother like this, but again, John let it pass.

John comes back, handing Sam a wet washcloth.

“What do you think happened? It wasn’t where we thought it was, it wasn’t what we thought it was, and there were two of ‘em.”   

Sam feels rage like a wave, before he kneels and begins sponging off his brother’s face, bringing the bruises into sharp contrast against his pale skin.  Sam hates to see Dean like this, feels it bodily.

 “Dean got the worst of it—number two tossed him around a bit. I think he’s got a concussion.”

“No shit," Samspits.  Like Sam couldn’t see that Dean had a concussion—like Sam hadn’t spent his entire life studying his brother, living in his pocket! Sam knew Dean almost as entirely as Sam knew Sam. 

It was Sam’s most dangerous obsession, in a life filled with both danger and obsessions.

“I’m fine,” Dean announces, and they both ignore him. 

John sighs, and Sam glares at him. His father looks exhausted, but Sam had no sympathy to spare.

Sam dabs gently at the wound on his brother’s scalp. It isn’t too bad—shallow enough that Sam can probably get away with superglue, if he could get it to stop bleeding. John hands him another washcloth and Sam yanks it away and stands, pressing it against his brother’s head. 

Sam is so fucking tired of playing field medic, of watching his brother bleed, Dean leaving little bits of himself behind on cheap sheets and scratchy towels.  Sam’s heart twists.

“Ice, ” Sam barks and John gives Sam a look, not pleased to be ordered around by his youngest no matter the circumstances, but Sam gives it right back to him. Dean may be John’s loyal solider, always _yessir_ , but Sam and his father were cut from the same cloth. It’s one of the reasons they fight so much.

Sam hears the door closed and squats down, eye-level. “You okay?”

“Just a scratch.” Dean goes for a shit-eating grin and winces as his lip starts to bleed again. Dean can be counted on to lie. 

 It’s certainly more than scratch, but not mortally so.

“Good.” Sam swallows, takes a deep breath, adds impulsively “I was worried when you didn't come home.”

Sam usually tries to lie to his brother, has gotten distinctly accomplished at it, but Dean bleeding brings his defenses all the way down.

Sam desperately needs his defenses.

Dean puts his hand over Sam’s, where Sam is holding the washcloth to his head as though to take over, but Sam doesn’t move, comforted by the feel of Dean’s familiar hand on his own. 

“I’ll always come home to you, Sammy, you know that.”

Sam wishes that were true.

The door opens again and Sam yanks his hand away as though burned, as though he’d been doing something wrong. John enters and hands Sam a plastic grocery bag filled with ice from the machine. Sam does not thank his father.

“You got it under control in here?” John asks, leaning heavily against the wall.

“Yessir.” Dean slurs, as though anyone had been talking to him.

John nods at both his boys, eyes Sam. “Don’t let him fall asleep.” Sam’s vision is awash in red-- like _Sam_ is the one who needs to be reminded to take care of Dean. As if there is anything in this world Sam would put before Dean.

__

 John turns to leave and Sam thrusts the ice at his brother, follows his Dad out the door, wild with misdirected fear.

__

John’s gets the door to his room open before he realizes Sam is behind him, but he doesn’t turn to look, just opens it and steps back to let Sam in first.

__

Sam stalks in.

__

“What the hell, Dad!?”  Sam isn’t sure what he wants or why he's here.

__

John ignores him, sits on the edge of his bed, taking off his boots. “I told you, it went sideways.”

__

“How can you let Dean come home like that?” Sam is pacing, shouting, infuriated. “Why weren’t you watching his back?”

__

 John matches Sam’s volume. They have gotten so good at getting under each others skin lately. “You think I like seeing Dean like that? You think there is anything I wouldn’t do to keep you boys safe?”

__

But Sam doesn’t believe that for one second.  

__

If John cared so much about keeping them safe, he wouldn’t be raising them like this. He wouldn’t have ever taken them hunting at all.  He’d have given his sons a normal life and Dean wouldn’t be bleeding right now and Sam would have real friends--the kind you didn't say goodbye to every couple of months, and maybe, just maybe, if he’d ever had a chance to spend any real time with anyone else at all he wouldn’t be so twisted up about his _brother_.

__

“I think there is _plenty_ you could do,” Sam snarls and steps towards his father, hands in fists at his side. It isn’t that he thinks his Dad wants to see Dean hurt—he knows John well enough to know that isn't the case at all, in any way—but this isn’t really about that at all.

__

Sam thinks he might punch his father, would like to very much, and then maybe, just maybe, John will banish him and Sam won’t have the choice to come back.

__

But John’s had enough. He needs a shower and a drink and about sixteen hours sleep. It had been hard enough to see Dean all dazed and bleeding without having to come home to Sam screaming at him about it. John grabs an empty beer bottle and chucks it at the wall, nowhere near Sam, but hard enough so that it explodes, gets his point across. He lowers his voice, menacing. “Get out, Sam.” Sam gets his temper from his father. 

__

Sam leaves, slamming the door again, because he can't stand to be around his father one second longer.

__

Dean’s still in the chair, towel still pressed to his head. Sam wonders with if he’d heard them through the paper-thin walls.  It pains Dean to watch John and Sam fight and if Sam could control it he’d have spared him. But Sam has barely any control at all when it comes to his father.

__

Or his brother.

__

Sam crosses towards the dresser and digs angrily through the medical kit for the hydrogen peroxide, codeine and a tube of crazy glue.

__

“It ain’t his fault, you know,” Dean mumbles, eyes closed.

__

“It’s always his fault,” Sam spits back.

__

 Neither of them are truly wrong.

__

Sam realizes his hands are shaking and he takes a few deep breathes, willing them to stop, willing his fury away because Dean needs him.

__

Sam sighs. “Sorry, I’m just so—” _madly in love with you and twisted up about it that I can’t think_.  Sam tries again. “I’m always worried you aren’t going to walk back through that door.” Which is true, though not totally the truth. The anger leeches out of Sam, replaced with the empty, sick feeling that had been his constant companion since Sam first realized he didn't just love his brother, he was in love with brother. A small but life-shatteringly important distinction.

__

Dean pastes a reassuring smile on his face, a real one, though hazy. Dean could always spare a smile for his kid brother. “There ain’t nothing that could keep me away from you, kid.”

__

It’s an even bigger lie than Dean could possibly be aware of and it lands on Sam like napalm.  Dean misreads it, thank God, getting Sam’s pain right but not the reason and rises to go to Sam, wincing, but Sam is by his side in a second, forcing him back down.

__

“I’m not finished, asshole.”

__

Dean grins at Sam again, but stays still.

__

Sam glues one brother back together.

__

 

__

 

__


End file.
